Karl Jansky Biography

     Karl Guthe Jansky was born in the Territory of Oklahoma on October 22, 1905. His father, Cyril M. Jansky, was born in Wisconsin of Czech immigrants and worked as Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Jansky’s brother, Cyril Jansky Jr. helped build some of the earliest radio transmitters in the country, including 9XM in Wisconsin. Karl Jansky attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree in physics in 1927. A year later he joined the Belle Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. Bell Labs assigned Jansky the job of investigating sources of static that might interfere with radio voice transmittions. At Bell Labs, Jansky built an antenna designed to receive radio waves at a frequency of 20.5 MHz. As it was mounted on a any-direction turntable, the antennae was nick named “Jansky’s merry-go-round”. After recording signals from all different directions for several months, Jansky categorized them into three types of static: nearby thunderstorms, distant thunderstorms, and unknown origin. After a year of investigating the source of the third type of static, Jansky initially surmised that he was detecting radiation from the Sun. The signal repeated on a cycle relative to the Earth’s sidereal day, instead of the 24-hour solar day. Jansky concluded that the radiation was coming from the Milky Way and was the strongest in the direction of the center of the galaxy. His discovery was publicized greatly, appearing in the New York Times in 1933. Karl Guthe Jansky was the first to discover radio waves from the Milky Way and is considered one of the founding fathers of radio astronomy. In honor of Jansky, the unit used by radio astronomers for the strength of radio sources is called the jansky. Another crater on the Moon is also named after Jansky. The NRAO postdoctoral fellowship program is named after Janksy, in addition to the annual Jansky Prize awarded by the organization. A full-scale replica of Jansky’s original rotating telescope is located on the grounds of the NRAO site in Green Bank, West Virginia. Jansky noise is also named after Jansky, which refers to high frequency static disturbances of cosmic origins. Karl Jansky passed away on Valentines day in 1950 due to kidney failure.

Bibliography

     Ghigo, F. "Karl Jansky." Karl Jansky. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 16 May 2008. Web. 24 May 2014. <http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_jansky.shtml>. 

     Redpath, Martina. "Karl Jansky: The Father of Radio Astronomy." Astronotes. Armagh Planetarium, 2010. Web. 24 May 2014. <http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/karl-jansky-the-father-of-radio-astronomy.html>.

     "Karl Jansky." NNDB. Soylent Communications, 2014. Web. 24 May 2014. <http://www.nndb.com/people/055/000204440/>.